Let Me Walk With You
by mdelpin
Summary: As Natsu prepares to go search for Igneel, his friends try to get him to deal with his feelings instead. My entry for Fire & Iron Week 2k19 for the prompt past.


Natsu x Gajeel Week

Prompt: Past

Let Me Walk With You

"I said I was going alone and that's final!" Natsu screeched at Erza, the action bringing the entire guild to a halt as everyone glanced at Erza nervously, not sure how she would react to Natsu's defiance.

"Natsu, get back here!" Erza yelled after him as he turned and left the guild, slamming the door behind him.

"I told you it was a bad idea to push like that," Gray pointed out, "He's done this every year since we've known him. It's just something he has to do."

"Letting him go searching for Igneel on his own is not safe, not with everything that's been happening."

"I offered to go with him," Gray informed her, "Heck even Lucy did, he turned us both down, besides he's not going on his own, Happy's going with him."

"That doesn't really make me feel any better," Erza frowned as she stared at the closed door.

"Do you want me to try talking to him again?" Gray offered, although he didn't look very enthused by the prospect.

"What's the point, you're just going to end up fighting, and you know it."

"Mhmm, " Gray agreed with a smirk, "We have some of our best conversations that way."

Erza rolled her eyes at her friend, but his reply had made her relax a little.

"How long do these trips usually last?" Lucy asked curiously. While it was true that she had met Natsu on one of these trips he hadn't gone on another since she'd joined the guild.

"As long as he needs them to," Gray shrugged, trying not to look hurt at the fact that his boyfriend consistently excluded him from something so important to him, "At this point, I don't think it's just about searching for Igneel, it's about dealing with his grief. I've been trying to get him to share some of it with me, but he always says I won't be able to understand."

"Do the other Dragon Slayers do something similar?" Lucy looked at the table where Gajeel and Wendy were sitting, speaking quietly amongst themselves.

"I don't really know, they've been in the guild for less time than you," Erza reminded her, also looking at the other dragon slayers curiously.

To her surprise, she saw Gajeel and Wendy do some sort of gesture that reminded her of Rock, Paper, Scissors which resulted in Gajeel scowling but getting up from the table and walking past them without even a glance. He left the guild, also slamming the door behind him.

"I wonder what that was about," Gray muttered under his breath.

Wendy came to stand near them, "He's going to go talk to Natsu-san about his trip."

"Well, I hope he can get through to him," Erza grumbled worriedly, knowing that whenever those two were involved, it could go either way. After Gray, Gajeel was the person Natsu enjoyed fighting with the most.

"He promised he'd be on his best behavior," Wendy assured her, "He might not seem like it most of the time, but he cares about Natsu-san."

Gray seemed put out by the development and decided to go home early. The rest of the team settled down to wait.

Gajeel had to smile at how easy it had been to outsmart Wendy. He knew that she'd wanted to be the one to go talk to Natsu, but he also knew the Salamander well enough to know it would have been useless. As much as the Fire Dragon Slayer adored Wendy, this was not something she could help him with. He started the long walk towards the small house in the woods that the Fire Dragon Slayer shared with his Exceed.

When they had first met, Gajeel had been surprised to learn that the Salamander was still so attached to his dragon after all this time. A long time ago he'd turned any longing he might have had for his foster father into rage at being left behind. That same rage had led him into a life full of darkness and bad decisions. Some of which he was still trying to make amends for, but thanks to Juvia and Makarov he was in a better place now both physically and emotionally, and maybe his desire to help Natsu was just his way of paying it forward.

But he supposed the Salamander was a very different person, he'd bought into the whole magic of friendship bullshit hook, line and sinker. And while Gajeel thought that in general, it was a nice outlook to have, for something like this it was dangerous. Salamander was setting himself up for a world of hurt, and it sounded like he'd been doing the same thing for the last seven years.

The dragons were gone, and no matter how determined Salamander was to find them, it wouldn't change a damn thing. Salamander was pushing his friends away at a time when he should be surrounding himself with them and that worried Gajeel, especially when he'd overheard the Ice Freak complain that Natsu was even pushing him away.

As much as he hated their meddling natures, Salamander's teammates were just what the idiot needed to help him get through this, but since he was a stubborn jackass, Gajeel supposed he would have to do instead.

He'd arrived faster than he'd anticipated and found himself staring at the front door of the small house. He knocked on the door as loudly as he could manage, grinning to himself at how much that would annoy the other dragon slayer.

He was not disappointed as a somewhat irritated Natsu opened his door, ready for a fight.

"What do _you_ want?" Natsu's eyes narrowed as he took in his unexpected visitor.

"Let's go for a walk," Gajeel ordered in a voice that would typically not invite argument, but this was Natsu after all.

"I'm not in the mood to play games, say what you gotta say and get the hell out."

Others might be intimidated by the animosity but not Gajeel, this was a language he understood well. He chuckled to himself.

"You in some kind of hurry?" Gajeel asked, grabbing Natsu's arm and pulling him outside, dragging him behind him as he began to walk. He smirked when Natsu dug in his heels and stopped their forward momentum.

"Fine, if it's so damn important to you I'll go, at least let me close the damn door first," He grumbled.

Natsu stomped towards his front door, and Gajeel could almost pinpoint the moment when he considered just running inside and closing the door behind him, but to his credit, he slumped his shoulders in a gesture of resignation right before slamming his door shut and returning to Gajeel.

"What the hell do you want, Metalhead?" Natsu was doing his best to start something, but Gajeel only began to whistle as he walked.

When he thought that Natsu was just about ready to explode, he asked, "What do you expect to find when you go on this little trip of yours? Are you even following a lead this time?"

"Is that what this is about?" Natsu stopped in his tracks, "Why is everyone so worked up about this? They've never cared before."

"I can't imagine you've found anything on any of these trips, so why do you keep going?"

"I won't give up on Igneel," Natsu replied firmly.

"You mean like he gave up on you?"

"You take that back you no good rusty bucket of bolts!" Natsu snarled, his fists lighting up in bright flames, "Igneel would never give up on me!"

"Natsu, we've all done this, it's a dead end," Gajeel decided to use the dragon slayer's name, something he seldom did, to try to get him to rein his temper in. "All of our dragons left on the same day, they clearly had something they had to do that was too dangerous to take us with them."

"You're not going to find him on this trip or any other," Gajeel announced bluntly.

"You think I don't know that?!" All the fight went out of Natsu as he muttered, "I found our cave."

"What?! When?!" Gajeel sputtered, he found himself getting excited despite his attempts to appear otherwise. To have found Igneel's cave was the first solid proof that they hadn't imagined everything as people often told them.

"A couple of years ago, I was lost in some mountains, and there was a storm coming, so I looked for shelter," Natsu shrugged.

"Are you sure?" Gajeel couldn't believe it, Salamander who couldn't keep his mouth shut about anything had been holding on to something as big as this!

"Yeah, our stuff was still in it."

"Did it seem like he'd been back?" Gajeel asked urgently, even as he reminded himself that just a few moments ago he'd been warning Natsu about the folly in this type of thinking.

Natsu shook his head, and Gajeel could see the pain flickering in the dragon slayer's olive eyes, "It looked and smelled like no one had set foot in there in a long time." He stared at a point past Gajeel, willing his eyes not to betray him, "That's when I finally accepted he was never coming back."

"I don't understand. If you know that, then why go back?"

"Because it's the closest I'm ever going to get," Natsu responded simply, and Gajeel could almost feel the emotions that Natsu was trying to keep contained.

Gajeel stared at the dragon slayer for a few minutes trying to determine if this new information changed what he had set out to do, and with a heavy heart, he realized it didn't. Perhaps even more so, it was time for Natsu to face his feelings and finally let go. He had been walking them back to the guild, but now he knew that wasn't the right place to take the Fire Dragon Slayer.

He changed direction and headed towards another part of town using his senses to make sure that person was home.

"You still shouldn't go alone," Gajeel pressed, surprising Natsu by how sincere he sounded.

"Don't tell me you want to come with me?" Natsu scoffed, although he thought someday he might like to take the other dragon slayers there, he was far from ready to share that much of himself with them.

Gajeel dissolved into laughs before replying, "Hell no."

"Then, who?" Natsu asked in genuine confusion.

"For someone as annoying as you, you've somehow managed to find a group of people that care about you more than you deserve." Gajeel pointed out, "You need to stop isolating this part of yourself from them and let them in for once, starting with the most important one."

Natsu looked puzzled by his words until he noticed where they had ended up. He immediately turned to leave when he heard Gajeel rap loudly on the door. He hissed, "What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

"What kind of idiot doesn't talk to his mate when something this big is bothering him?" Gajeel grinned, waving and running away as fast as he could, leaving only a trail of gihis in his wake.

Natsu was caught, having already heard the ice mage approaching the door. It soon opened showing a scantily clad Gray gaping at him in surprise, "Natsu? What are you doing here?"

Natsu's first impulse was to flee as he always did when anything remotely serious or dealing with emotions came up between them. He'd never really been able to overcome the fear of being left, so he constructed walls to keep himself safe from heartache. He thought Gray at least understood that part of it.

Gajeel's words stayed with him though, and he knew the obnoxious Iron Dragon Slayer had been right. It was about time he stopped hiding such an essential part of himself from his mate. He decided he would not only talk to Gray about Igneel, but he would also let him in on his secret, and maybe even invite him to come along.

"Can we talk?" Natsu responded with a sheepish grin, and when he saw Gray tense visibly, he quickly added. "It's about Igneel."

Gray smiled and wrapped his arms around him in an embrace. "I've been waiting for a long time to hear you say that," Gray's smile never faltered as he moved out of the way, letting Natsu inside his apartment.

Gajeel smirked from his hiding spot, having decided to stay nearby so he could make sure the Salamander didn't try to weasel out of the conversation. When he saw Gray let Natsu into his apartment he began the short walk back to the guild. He hummed to himself, the recent events already inspiring him to start work on a new song.

.


End file.
